More Process

Dear Friends,

I went to church today with Chuck at All Nations Christian Care. Singing starts at 7 a.m. and we arrived around 7:30. The service started at 8 with another half hour of announcements, prayers and an auction(!). They auctioned off two bars of soap (USh 1800) and a small bag of tomatoes that included a free small exercise book (USh 1000). The preacher used up an hour with his sermon. The early service is in English and the 11 o'clock in in Lual. Great music and lots of active participation by the congregation. Chuck and I were fortunate to be close to a window that had a very cool breeze coming thru -- just like air conditioning. A short summary; it is not my kind of theology.

Ken, Adelitus and Mary met us outside afterward. We were greeted by the Bishop and spoke with him briefly. Mathew had been in church, too but must have been elsewhere in the sanctuary. Ken, Adelitus and Mary had been to visit our fellow volunteer Joyce's son at the Health Center. He has appendicitis but the doctor has not operated on him because the doctor says he can not perform surgery while the patient has a fever. This situation is alarming because the fever will not go down while there is an infection. The appendix may burst and spread infection throughout the abdomen and the boy will die. Our people were asking Mathew to intercede, but he is reluctant because he has no training as a doctor. We have Adelitus, though! So they returned with Mathew to once again ask that Joyce's son have surgery. Stay tuned for the outcome.

Friday I went with Adelitus, Mary, Rosette and Monic to Boke camp. Adelitus was to continue his clean up program, but a young man had broken his tibia playing soccer and so he and Evaster took him off to the hospital. We started another stove demonstration. Monic and Rosette want the residents to really *own* the stoves and maintain them. But at 11:30 Ken came by to pick them up along with Dr. Lori Uyeno to show them the Rachelli Center. So Mary and I stayed to demonstrate. Well, I'm kinda useless since I don't speak Lual. So I walked down to hill to the brickyard where a batch of 2400 bricks had been baked and were ready to take to Erute camp. It was a hot day, as usual, and there was no shade and my water supply had left in the car. So I went on the truck to Erute and supervised the unloading. I think about half our bricks broke during the trip! :-( By the time Ken and Mathew came to pick me up, I was well baked since there was no shade at the part of the camp where we unloaded the bricks. So as we drove to lunch, I drank two liters of water as a partial repayment to my body. Since it was late in the afternoon after lunch, nobody wanted to return to the camp to assemble stoves, so we quit early for the day.

Saturday we started early building stoves, but Ken had brought only 6 saw blades for cutting the bricks. So he left to go get more. Mathew had to leave, too. And chaos reigned! I finally found a couple of people who spoke English and we established an orderly line for people taking bricks. We were also short of pliers, so people who had the bricks had to wait to put the wire around their stove. Some people were just taking the bricks off in bags and others were trying to use broken bricks. But again that human spirit rose up and stoves were made -- more than 150, we think. We're not sure because people carted them off as soon as they were finished so we couldn't count them.

Dennis the brick man was to have fired another 8000 bricks Friday that would have been ready tomorrow, but he and his crew had other things to do -- go drinking! So if he fires the bricks on Monday, they won't be ready until Thursday and Christine, Adelitus and I leave Friday afternoon on our homeward journey! Well, TIA, remember - This Is Africa!

Out of time again, so 'til next time --

Peter